


The Gender of a Generation

by ninhursag



Category: Social Network (2010)
Genre: Coercion, F/F, Gender Issues, Genderswap, Jealousy, Sexual Harassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-12
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-18 00:15:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An always a cis-gender girl au.  How Eduarda Saverin stopped worrying and learned to love college. How <strike>Marcie</strike> Mark Zuckerberg almost grew a conscience (or learned to borrow someone else's) and took some preliminary steps toward ruling the world (okay, just the Internet). Spoiler: Despite being mentioned in one sentence, those events were unrelated.</p><p>Contains: Sexual harassment. Troubled family relationships. Roofies (not part of any romantic relationships, there is no actual non or dubcon here). Venomous jealousy. Aborted threesomes and emotional coercion. 19 year old MZ, even girl-shaped, is not really a nice person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously, this is not true and never happened.

Eduarda Saverin had an older (by about fourteen months) brother she never met and for the first eighteen years of her life that was the most important thing anyone could know about her. He lived about two months (they said it was SIDs, but no one really knew). She inherited his baby clothes (blues and yellows, never pink), his name (in feminine form), and his (her) parents' infinite disappointment. She didn't know if it would have helped if she were the replacement boy they wanted.

Other than the early exposure to blue, they never treated her like a boy, even though (much later) her mother said that must, must, must have been why (she turned out the way she did). She took ballet and piano, like all the daughters of her parents' friends, but was only really good at the first one. She learned French and Latin to go with the English and Portuguese she had natively. She wore make-up and heels when she was supposed to, and the heels were easy after learning to dance en pointe when she was twelve.

She smiled at boys (they did not make her stomach twist like boys in romances did. She thought that might be her not having romance in her bones. She didn't think about the way she watched Elena who sat in front of her in chemistry and the way she bent to pick up her pen). Sometimes they smiled back. Nothing came of it.

(She was good at math, it made her teachers blink at her. In fifth grade, when she was still in Sao Paulo, Miss Lopez said, _but aren't fractions scary_ and giggled, when they never were. Sometimes, when she thought he didn't know she could hear him, her eleventh grade teacher in Miami muttered about her taking up a seat in AP calc when someone else would enjoy it more. She didn't think anyone could. She never said anything.)

Mostly, she kept her head down in high school, smiled like a lady and got the top spot in her class. “We're all so proud of you, Eduarda,” her principal said, smiling at her with shiny, bleached teeth, like he didn't smoke outside the staffroom. “You're going to do great things.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “I'm so honored.”

The first person she told was Nomi, her dance teacher, at her lesson that night (all the daughters of her parents' friends had put ballet aside like childish things. Eduarda still went, sometimes five nights a week. Her mother clucked her feet, over her blisters and bunions and the blood that broke through the band-aides and stained her socks, but she kept up her grades, so they still let her go. She liked to get out of the house. She loved Nomi. She loved dancing).

Nomi wrapped both arms around her and held on tight, skinny arms and the powdery smell of her make-up. “That's amazing news, Eduarda,” she said. “Want to hear something else amazing?”

“What?” Eduarda asked, giddy and grinning, bent down to tuck her chin against Nomi's shoulder. “Tell me what else is that amazing?”

“Juilliard auditions are in Miami next month. And you, _minha querida_ , have a slot if you want it.”

For a moment, she let herself feel a pure burst of hope and joy, because, Juilliard, how amazing would that be? The doors it would open-- to be a dancer in a company, on the stage. She could see herself, Giselle, Clara, the Swan Queen. Nomi thought she could do it, maybe she could. Maybe...

She already knew it wouldn't happen-- her applications were in to Harvard and Yale, Stanford and Columbia. It was going to be that.

When she told her parents about her class rank, her mother hugged her, stroked her hair and smiled, but murmured, “But, don't forget that we expect grandchildren. The boys don't like it when a girl is too clever, not when they want a wife.”

Her father laughed, big and booming. “Oh, no one thinks Eduarda is too clever! What a thing to worry about!”

(She didn't have a boyfriend most of high school, but hearing that was when she made up her mind she would before she left. His name was Michael and he was American-American, his mother actually made them sandwiches with cakey wonder bread, mayonnaise and thick slices of neon-orange cheese.

She lost her virginity in the back of his dad's Toyota Avalon on prom night, just like people did in the movies. It looked better in the movies, in real life it was awkward and fast and didn't exactly hurt, but it was definitely uncomfortable. He got all sweaty, dripped his sweat onto her skin. His eyes crossed when he came, which was just about the time it actually started to feel good. Then it was over.

But, he liked her, even though she was the valedictorian, so that counted for something.)

 **And Her Name Is**

Then she came to Harvard, out from under, and that was when everything changed.

That was when she met _Natalie_. Natalie was majoring in women's studies (Eduarda's parents would not approve). Natalie saved her life (not literally, probably, hopefully).

It was this party. Eduarda never really liked parties in high school, too much noise, too much crush, too hard to break into the small knots of chattering people who never seemed to have any space for someone new to slot into it. College, she told herself, would be different. She would be effervescent and confident, loved and admired. Fake it 'til you make it, just like they said in all the business books her father had on his shelf.

Beer really helped. Really a lot. Beer made it easy to smile and talk, to dance when someone asked her to. Beer made her laugh instead of wince when this smarmy looking guy with a too smug smile sidled up next to her and said, “Hey, baby. Tell me about why I should be interested in talking to you?”

She blinked down at him, tilting her chin. He was a good two inches shorter than her. He'd be shorter than her even if she wasn't wearing heels. “What?” she asked.

His smiled stretched out. “You heard me. I'm trying to find a girl who's worth my time. Are you?”

Normally, she'd get flustered if someone-- a guy, but anyone-- talked to her like that. She could sort of feel that place inside herself, red and nervous, stammering something out about how she was, she was here, at Harvard, of course she was worth... she was. But that place was soothed way down by alcohol and determination and she just... just started down at him, and he was ridiculous, like a yappy dog or something.

She laughed. Watched him turn red and laughed some more, loud and bright and it felt so good. Watched him mutter something under his breath that sounded like _bitch_ but she didn't even care. It felt so damned good.

“I thought that the admissions process at Harvard was supposed to weed out the idiots. Guess the evidence demonstrates otherwise,” someone said from behind her, and Eduarda turned around, still grinning, brilliant and powerful, to see a girl looking up at her from the couch. The girl had unstyled curly red hair cut short, skin that looked like she never left the house, a raised eyebrow that had obviously never been tweezed, and a beer in her left hand. But that was not as weird as the laptop resting on her knees, because who brought laptops to parties?

Still. Eduarda just grinned at her and found herself saying something that wasn't even close to nice, even close to ladylike and she didn't even care. “Yeah, even if they did screen them out I'm sure the world would just find a better idiot to slip under the radar. There are just so many of them.”

The corners of laptop girl's mouth tilted up and she raised her beer at Eduarda, as if in salute. “I'll drink to that,” she said, and did, the long line of her throat moving as she swallowed. Then she put the beer down and turned her attention back to her laptop, eyes narrow in concentration and fingers flying, like she'd already forgotten Eduarda was there.

Eduarda grinned, rolled her eyes, and wandered off to get another drink.

The guy manning a makeshift bar mixed her a shot and she took it. Then another. She would never know for sure if what happened was that she just overshot her tolerance by a huge margin or that the asshole she'd laughed off actually slipped her something, she just knew that it was on shot number two that things started to go fuzzy around the edges and she found herself stumbling, hands clutching at the wall. It was too slippery to hold her up, really, and she could feel herself start to panic under the waves of dull unsteadiness.

She didn't even see him until he was right on her, a rough hand on her elbow that gripped a little too hard even as it stopped her from falling. He was smiling when she blinked at him. “Hey, bitch,” he whispered. Then, louder, “You look wasted, baby. How about I see you home?”

She winced, but his fingers just tightened and she was unsteady on her heels, tottering. She never tottered, one part of her brain hissed at her, she never, she was a fucking dancer. “Lemmalone,” she said, but it came out too soft and too slurred. “Leggo.”

“Now, don't be like that, baby. You look too wasted to even get home, but don't worry, my room's just upstairs, come on,” he crooned and he was still smiling, she could see his smile even when the rest of him wavered when she blinked, like he was the Cheshire Cat in human form.

She looked around, but no one was looking at her, or seemed to be, when he put one arm around her waist and pulled her along. Her skin crawled and she made a noise that didn't even sound like herself. There were all these people, hot and close, and-- why wasn't anyone looking? Why wasn't she yelling?

“Stop it,” she hissed, but it was still too quiet, no one was going to hear her and all she could do was panic and then--

“Hey, is she all right?” and there was this girl, tall and beautiful in this perfect red dress, and she wavered in front of Eduarda's blurry vision, her Afro haloing her head like... like an angel's.

“Sure,” smarmy said. “Just a little too much to drink. Freshman chicks, right? I'm going to take her upstairs to sleep it off.”

But the girl had this frowning face and she was shaking her head and looking right at Eduarda. “Hey, are you all right? Do you know this guy? Do you need help?” She offered a hand, outstretched and hey, Eduarda could do that.

She grabbed it. “No,” she said, as comprehensibly as she could. “Dunno. Yes. I need help.”

Somewhere, like buzzing, she could hear smarmy saying something, thick and condescending and rude, but this girl had the darkest eyes and she didn't let go of Eduarda's hands. Eduarda closed her eyes and let herself relax, fall forward, let go.

Somebody caught her. That was Natalie.

She woke up in the morning in a strange room, hung over, with a pounding head and a mouth like cotton and rotting meat. There was a girl, asleep in the chair next to the bed. Even in the daylight, when Eduarda had the biggest headache and the girl was sleep mashed and had the imprint of the chair fabric on the skin of her cheek, she was beautiful.

Eduarda just stared at her for a few minutes or maybe longer, until she woke up. Blinked and smiled, slow and smooth as honey. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said. “You ran into some trouble last night. Do you know where you are?”

Eduarda would have shaken her head, but, ow. Instead she just said, “Somewhere safe?” Because that much was obvious. The girl's smile got even bigger, which was apparently possible.

“Yeah, I've got that going for me. I'm Natalie Jones,” she said and offered a hand.

Eduarda winced a little when she took it, since that meant moving, but what could she do? “Eduarda Saverin,” she croaked out.

“That's a pretty name, Eduarda Saverin. Now let me get you some water.” And she did, cool and sweet and wonderful even if it did come in a plastic Dasani bottle. Eduarda gulped it down gratefully.

“You're an angel,” Eduarda blurted out and then she could feel herself blush, hot and red, but Natalie smiled at her, like she didn't mind at all.

 **She whispers to me and I take the big plunge**

The whole experience of college was looking up even before Eduarda found out that kissing could actually be meaningful and... and nice, instead of slimy and weird, but that was the crowning moment. It happened like this:

She was in Natalie's room, pulling together her macro notes for the midterm. She spent a lot of time in Natalie's room, probably more than any of Natalie's other friends, but Natalie never seemed to mind. She just smiled, warm as honey, and shifted over on her couch or on her bed and said, “Come and sit by me, Edi.”

That was nice. That was so nice, sitting on the couch, Natalie reading Simone de Beauvoir in translation and Eduarda reading about the Quantitative Theory of Money. It felt warm, when Natalie budged over and made room for Eduarda to fold up her long knees. “You've got legs like a ballerina, Edi,” Natalie murmured, like she admired that and Eduarda grinned.

“I am,” she said. “I mean... I dance, not professionally or anything, just for fun. Danced. All the time growing up.” It felt weird to put in the past tense, even if she'd always known she'd have to. Her parents thought it was past time to put away childish things and they'd read her transcript if she signed up for any classes.

Natalie frowned at her, like she thought something was weird about what Eduarda had just said. “But you don't anymore?” she asked. “You look like you miss it.”

Eduarda shook her head. “Who has the time?” she asked. She wanted to tell Natalie, all of the sudden. About Nomi and Juilliard and all the maybes that were gone. Dancing Giselle, forever and ever. Maybe it showed in her eyes.

“Well,” Natalie said, slowly and carefully like she was choosing her words. “They have drop in classes at Cambridge Adult Ed down in Central Square, if you want. Some of my friends took Flamenco classes there, but they do ballet too. I bet you could find the time for that.”

“I don't know—” Eduarda began, already shaking her head even though her brain was spinning, because, even amateur classes would have space she couldn't get in her tiny closet of a dorm room. A mirror and a barre and, like this, her father would never--

“Edi, I think you do know. Come on, I'll take you by there now if you want, you look like you're on the last page of the chapter.” Natalie was already shifting to stand up, smiling and sure, and always beautiful and she was going to take Eduarda dancing.

It was pure, fervent instinct. Eduarda didn't even see herself coming, not until the next moment, between smiles, when she had one palm curled around the nape of Natalie's neck and she was pulling her back down, eager and ardent and ready. She was kissing her.

Natalie. Barely a moment, no time to even get nervous and Natalie was kissing her back. Natalie's mouth was warm and firm, but her skin was soft, and she tasted sweet as anything. She had a gentle tongue.

When the kiss broke, she was smiling so wide and Eduarda could feel herself smiling back. “Okay,” Natalie said. “Let's go to Central Square tomorrow.”

If being naked in company counted as a cherry, Eduarda lost that one that night. With Mike, it hadn't even occurred to her to do much more than pull up her skirt and tug down her stockings and panties, or maybe it hadn't occurred to him. Natalie wanted to _see_.

“God, look at you, pretty baby,” she said. “My beautiful ballerina.” And Eduarda laughed, naked and ridiculous in Natalie's dorm room, with just enough space to lift up her arms and execute a half-assed pirouette. She felt beautiful.

The bed squeaked a little under their weight and Eduarda couldn't bring herself to even get embarrassed, to care if someone heard, because Natalie's hands were on her knees, steady and sure, and Natalie's tongue was so clever, like she'd been practicing for years and she knew what Eduarda's clit was for a lot better than Eduarda herself. “That's it, honey, I want to make you feel as good as you look,” Natalie crooned, and her fingers slipped inside of Eduarda's slippery body, one and then two, moving in time to the flicks of her tongue.

If coming in company counted as a cherry then... yeah... that.

 **I look up into the big tower clock and say, "oh my God it's midnight!"**

The rest of the semester, Eduarda had schoolwork, dancing and Natalie. And Natalie's friends, who smiled at her and called her name and made room at the caf when she looked like she might sit down and eat alone.

Natalie's friends who'd hook their arms through hers and walk with her when some drunk boy tried to follow her down the yard and it was amazing how close the assholes wouldn't come when Eduarda wasn't alone. She felt warm all the time even during exams.

Winter break felt like a storm cloud up ahead, because she'd be going home, and this... all of this would be over. Only for a while, though, she told herself, and then she'd come back and it would all be perfect and golden again. It was a storm that she could see coming a long way off, the other thing wasn't.

Not Natalie, straddling a chair and smiling at her and saying, like it was good news. “Hey, Edi, guess what? You'll never guess! My transfer application to Stanford is a go. I am ditching this freezing cold land of assholes come January.”

Eduarda just found herself staring. “You,” she managed. “You're leaving?”

“Hell to the yes,” Natalie crowed, eyes gleaming and her whole posture almost as bright with joy as when Eduarda put her fingers between her legs and just...

“But. But what about--” she began, but Natalie talked right over her.

“You'll be the only thing I miss, pretty Edi,” she said. “My very last and very, very best Harvard fling.”

And Eduarda swallowed and... and she just smiled. She smiled and said. “Oh. Um. That's great! You're my very first Harvard fling, I guess.”

Natalie grinned at her, leaned over, and kissed her cheek. If she noticed that Eduarda was a little stiff she didn't say a word about it. Eduarda told herself she was glad that Natalie was helping her not make a fool of herself about this.

In retrospect, she should have known, right? How could she not have known?

There were three things she did after leaving Natalie that night. The first was that she went to a party at the GSA and got drunk, very drunk. The second was that she was in fact so drunk that she fucked a lacrosse player named Carin Kelley on somebody's bare mattress with a sparkly red dildo that may or may not have been a party favor. It was not good. It wasn't as bad as Michael in High School, because Carin was actually hot, but Eduarda didn't exactly come either. Mostly because this smugly amused blond gay kid who she thought might be named Chris popped in through the door that she thought was locked and said, “Hey, everyone can hear that you girls are having fun, but could we keep the lesbian sex in our own dorms? Or at least at low volume?”

Eduarda may have given him the finger, but Carin had mumbled something and started to put her clothes back on, so that was horrible.

The third and final thing was... well, Eduarda Saverin, who had never been in trouble a single day in her life, would later maintain that she was very provoked and very drunk on her way home when she went a jammed her one inch heel into the instep of a frat boy who wolf-whistled at her. And, possibly broke his foot doing it. The Ad Board was not as convinced. Neither were her parents when they found out about the month of academic probation.

“You could have been expelled for this!” her father hissed when she was in his office, eyes firmly fixed on the rug. “You are damned lucky you are too old for the belt, Eduarda. What the hell would my friends say if my daughter was known to have been expelled for _assaulting_ a boy.”

“What kind of reputation will you have now, on campus?” her mother asked, and wiped away a tear that may have had something to do with the onions the maid was chopping. “You need to leave school married or at least engaged, or what will have been the point?”

So, mostly, Eduarda spent winter break hiding in her room, watching the weather channel. It was weird and soothing and better than ice cream, for her waist line at least. She didn't really pay attention to what was actually being said until about the second week in and that's when she had this thought...

Hey. You know what goes with weather? Heating costs. You know what goes with heating costs? Oil costs. Predict the weather, predict... _oil futures_. She still had the account her Baba put away for her when she was a baby and now that she was over eighteen, she could use it. Seed money.

So, that was how Eduarda made $300,000 sitting in her bedroom with her break-up angst, betting oil futures. It was definitely better than ice cream.

 **Ooh I'll put my spell on her**

Back at campus, it turned out Eduarda's mother had nothing to worry about. The boy had done whatever and her dad had done whatever and the whole thing never made the Crimson (it being the tail end of finals probably helped).

Drunk guys had not learned not to wolf-whistle, it was more like Eduarda had learned not to break their feet in retaliation.

Natalie's friends still made room for her at the dining hall, which Eduarda actually hadn't expected, and it was... it was... nice. She had thought it wouldn't be, but it was. They knew about the boy and the Ad Board and they thought it was awesome, so at least some good had come out of it.

Also, laptop girl from the party all those months ago was the first person Eduarda recognized in her Linear Algebra class. She came in late, always seemed to be wearing the same pair of flip-flops along with an assortment of hoodies that looked like she'd picked them up in the men's department.

Other than Eduarda, she was the only person in the class who always knew the answer when she raised her hand, and possibly Eduarda liked to look at her, maybe a lot. And doodle sketches of her face in the margins of her class notes. Then one day laptop girl was actually in early, already seated before Eduarda got to class. She didn't know what possessed her to take the empty seat right next to her when the classroom was full of other empty seats, but, well, she did.

The old Eduarda, pre-Natalie, pre-Harvard, would never have done this, not until she had some reason to think that the girl would maybe, possible want to talk to her back, but that girl was gone. This Eduarda smiled, stuck out her hand and said, “Hey. I'm Eduarda Saverin.”

Laptop girl looked up at her with obvious surprise in her very blue eyes. Her eyebrows were still untweezed and she was still... well, it was interesting, her sartorial choices. “I know who you are,” laptop girl said. “We met at a party last semester.”

Eduarda found herself grinning. “Right. You remember that?”

“Yeah,” laptop girl said. She still hadn't taken Eduarda's hand, so Eduarda let it drop down on the desk. “You're also the one who broke Bill Addison's foot right after finals. He might not be rowing this spring.”

Eduarda shrugged and tried not to look embarrassed. “I didn't actually mean to... I mean, I'm not as scary as I look, so don't worry.”

Laptop girl blinked at her. “What? You don't look scary, you look like a girly-girl who might start talking about her boyfriend for twenty minutes if someone asked one question. But, I know you're actually not, so I don't mind. Who knew that heels could kill rowing careers? Anyway, it doesn't matter, you're basically the only person other than me in this whole class who doesn't behave like a brain damaged moron, so I don't mind talking to you.”

Eduarda found herself staring. Laptop girl stared back, like she didn't know someone wasn't supposed to. She raised her eyebrows like she was asking a question.

“You're kind of, um, amazing,” Eduarda said, and she was grinning again, she couldn't help it. “Now, you're supposed to tell me your name.”

“Oh,” laptop girl frowned and then shrugged. “Okay! I thought you might know. It's Mark. Mark Zuckerberg. That is my actual name as far as you're concerned, so don't ask if it's short for Marcia, it's not. Anyway... amazing? Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Eduarda said.

Mark made a face. Eduarda was half tempted to tell her it will stick like that, but she didn't want to sound like someone's mom. “That's not the reaction I normally get from girls.”

Eduarda tilted her chin. “You know a lot of girls?” she asked.

“No, because they usually hate me by this point in the conversation,” Mark said easily, but she was actually smiling now, not just doing the lip tilt thing from before.

“Huh, no way,” Edurada found herself smiling back. “You want to get some coffee after class?”

Mark shook her head. “I'm working on a problem set for my systems class and I've got this little side project, that...well, so I'll be too busy.” She frowned. “Well, maybe, if it's not a very big coffee.”

“Okay, a small coffee.” Eduarda didn't have the chance to say much more before the professor finally made it in and started talking, settling his briefcase on the desk.

After class, Eduarda settled into step beside Mark, who frowned up at her, but allowed it. “So, you're not a CS major, I'd have seen you in more of my classes if you were.”

“No, I'm Econ,” Eduarda said. “Why?”

Mark blue stare was momentarily unblinking and then she shrugged and looked away. “I was just wondering. I mean, if you want me to help you with homework or something, I probably won't so don't bother. But I don't see why you would if you're Econ. This is our only class together and you don't need help in it.”

Eduarda paused. Ran that speech back through her head forwards and then backwards. Oh. “Oh. No. I mean, I can do my own homework. I just wanted to talk to you. I've been... you seemed interesting in class, that's all.”

“Oh. That's fine then.” Mark didn't say anything most of the rest of the way and then she paused when this skinny-ish guy in shorts started to wave at them and walk in their direction. Eduarda winced inwardly, expecting some kind of... she didn't know, but Mark said, “That's Dustin, he's my roommate.”

“He's a guy,” Eduarda said without thinking about it. “You can't have a male roommate.”

Mark shrugged, like that didn't matter. “Yeah, student housing pitched a fit about it, but my roommate first semester had a nervous thing induced by keyboards at midnight or something and she got her girly make-up crap all over my stuff. I don't know, I just wanted to room with my friends like everyone else. I just kept talking until they gave in. Dustin!” She waved at the boy.

He was cute for a boy, a bright smile on his mouth, like a taller, slightly less red headed Mark. It took him an extra ten seconds longer than normal for a guy like that to start staring at Eduarda. And staring. Eduarda shifted on her feet and forced a smile back. He bits his lip and looked like he was going to say something, but nothing came out.

“Dustin,” Mark said. Mark was frowning, looking from Dustin to Eduarda and back again. “He's not usually like a gaping fish, I'm not sure what's wrong. Dustin! Do you need me to give you Heimlich or something?”

Eduarda sighed and shook her head. She offered her hand. “Hi, Dustin, I'm Eduarda, It's nice to meet you.”

He stared at her hand blankly and took it for just a second. His grip was loose and his palm was a little damp. “Hi, you're talking to me. You're really beautiful,” Dustin stammered. The tips of his ears turned a soft shade of pink. “Um. Sorry. Sorry, that was inept of me. Wow. Hi.”

Eduarda tried to suppress a laugh and couldn't quite manage it. “Yeah, hi,” she said.

He grinned back at her suddenly and it made his whole face change, turn brighter. Like he wasn't offended at all by the half stifled laugh. “So, um, I apologize in advance, but I have to get this out of the way. I just want you to know this is a one time deal, because, once you shoot me down and destroy my hopes forever, we can be friends. So. Do you have a boyfriend? Do you think there is any way in the universe you would ever go out with me?”

“You _should_ apologize in advance for idiocy, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Mark hissed from one side, but Eduarda found that she was still smiling.

This was not how she normally started conversations, but... eh. Eh. “I don't really like boys that way, sorry.”

Usually, a guy who heard that acted like it was either annoying or an opening for him to suggest a threesome starring himself. “Oh? Oh! No, that's okay. I don't like boys that way either, so we have that in common! Excellent start. Let's do this again, but better. I'm Dustin, and you're Eduarda. Hi!” He thrust out a hand with a huge, warm looking grin.

She took it. This time it wasn't limp at all and he held her grip for just the right amount of time. “Yeah, Mark just mentioned.”

His jaw dropped again and he peered over at Mark, who looked furiously irritated. Then he grinned again. “Mark? Our Mark? And you? I mean, I didn't know Mark liked humans in that way! Wow.”

“I'm going to infect all of your computers with viruses,” Mark muttered. “Do not turn your back on me.” She paused. Frowned. Stared at Eduarda. “Wait. Wait, is this coffee thing a _date_?”

Eduarda found that she was the one blinking. “Uh. I didn't mean--” she started, but Mark ran right over her.

“Because, I _told_ you I'm working on a problem set for my systems class and... I don't have time for a date this very second. Can we have a date tomorrow?” she said.

“Tomorrow? You're an idiot,” Dustin observed from the sidelines. “What the hell is wrong with you, Mark?”

Mark's eyes went wide and she spun around, hands on her hips. Eduarda could feel herself smiling, feel it stretch on her mouth. “What's wrong with me? You just hit on my _date_ , you asshole. Even I know you don't do that!”

“A date tomorrow would be fine,” Eduarda said, still grinning, hands stuffed into her pockets and watching Dustin yell back. They may have been too busy yelling at each other to notice, but that was okay. Everything was.


	2. B-Side (Do It Like a Dude)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How ~~Marcie~~ Mark Zuckerberg almost grew a conscience (or learned to borrow someone else's) and took some preliminary steps toward ruling the world (okay, just the Internet). Spoiler: Despite being mentioned in one sentence, those events were unrelated.  
>  Contains: Sexual harassment. Venomous jealousy. Aborted threesomes and emotional coercion. 19 year old MZ, even girl-shaped, is not really a nice person.

**In my spaceship I'm an alien tonight**

Mark Zuckerberg (yes, the name on her birth certificate said Marcie. You can shut up) was born the youngest of four and the only girl. According to her parents, she had decided to ignore the girl part since day one, but that wasn't actually true. She didn't really want a dick or anything, she didn't want guys in the halls at school calling her out for being nerdy or trying to stuff her in lockers like they did to her friends or whatever. She was fine with herself.

She did not want what she did not have in any way except for desperately. It was zen, in a way.

Eduarda Saverin was not her only friend, not her first friend, not her best friend. She was all those things at once, but only metaphorically speaking, not in the real world. It made sense in Mark's head, or someday it would. But, that was later.

Mark grew up in a big house with her own bedroom, her own computer and every advantage including parents who loved her and big brothers who had her back. If it had been any other way, she'd probably have turned out to be a serial killer, because the rest of the world pissed her right off. When she told people that later, they'd thought she was joking.

People laughed when she told them that later, like they thought she was making a hilarious joke. She wasn't, but she also didn't tell them about the time she was four or five and thought it would be interesting to take things apart and see what they looked like on the inside. And some of those things were fine, even though her dad really wasn't happy about finding the component parts of his computer outside the casing.

Some of them were not fine, like the frog, slimy and delicate, alive under her fingers until it wasn't anymore. Like the butterfly with the wings that twitched when she pinned them down, thin needles through their bodies. Like the look on her mother's face, tight and pale, when she caught her at it, and okay, it wasn't one butterfly, it was possibly ten of them, twitching on the paper, wings beating with all the range they had..

“Marcie,” hissed and soft (that was before she'd quite managed to convince everyone she'd only answer to Mark). “What are you doing?”

“Being a scientist,” Mark explained, because didn't Mom understand? She wanted to see. She wanted to feel the flutter against her hands, soft on her skin. “I'm seeing their inside bits.”

Her mother breathed, and Mark couldn't have said why, but she thought... thought she looked a little sad and maybe scared and her mom was never scared, not by anything, so that was wrong and it made her feel cold and shaky inside. “Marcie,” she said, slow and soft and worse than angry, because she was sad and she was... she _was_ scared. “Honey. They... even animals... they _feel_. What you're doing is hurting them, do you understand?”

She... she wasn't sure she did, but her Mom was looking at her like... in a way that she would do anything to make stop.

“I-- I'm sorry,” she whispered and her mother hugged her, sudden and hard and tight.

And then it was the same thing, later that year, when Billy Dyson down the street wanted to borrow Mark's (she was definitely Mark by then) bike and she didn't want to, it was hers, her first no training wheels bike. He tried to take it anyway and she saw red, vicious and blistering when he put his hands on it, his _hands_ on her things.

She didn't remember what happened between then and the time her oldest brother Adam came running down the street, but by the time he pulled her off Billy her knuckles ached and her mouth was stretched out into a rictus grin. Billy was shaking, curled into a ball, hands over his face, and it felt... she didn't know. Like nothing.

The look on Adam's face wasn't nothing. “Marcie,” he hissed. “You can't--

“My name is Mark,” she muttered a little rebellious, but not struggling against his grip. “You know that, Adam, you know--”

“You're my sister and I love you. And maybe he deserved a smackdown, but, Marc—okay, Mark. Look at him. Look.”

She did, and there was Billy, still huddled up and scared, whimpering into his knees. Her hands hurt. They hurt. Looking back at Adam hurt more.

People thought she was a robot, that she didn't care because no one mattered to her, but that wasn't true. It could have been true, but it wasn't.

“It's called having a conscience, Mark,” Chris, the only friend she had at Harvard who was good at figuring that kind of thing out, told her years later, when they were stoned out of their minds and spread out on the floor in their suite at Kirkland. “You don't have your own, so you borrow other people's. Just as long as it's the right other person's, you'll be fine.”

She frowned, wrinkled her nose and then finally shrugged, because it was true. There weren't many people, but there were, had always been, some. There were her mother, her father, her brothers. Dustin's upturned, annoying smirk, that would reliably turn down if she went too far. There was Chris himself.

There was Eduarda, delicate and lovely as a butterfly, beating her wings against Mark's fingertips forever and ever.

 **No pretty drinks, I'm a guy out here**

She discovered naked girls when she was about thirteen, watching her brothers' porn while they were off doing something else. There were naked dudes in there too, but the camera always focused on the girls, with their weirdly vacant eyes, narrow arms and legs, and round, round breasts, so Mark stared at them. It was easy. At first, she just thought about how they didn't look anything like herself, not really. She wasn't sure if they were the aliens or she was.

Later, she started to think other things, but it was never something that crystallized, it was never that important, not for years.

She did not date in high school-- no one really asked her, and she was busy the few times some of the guys and one or two of the girls tried to. That said, Mark believed in efficiencies and it felt like at a certain point the state of virginity was not an efficient one. It was distracting to her and to other people who knew about it. It made her think about something she shouldn't too much. She decided to take care of it during freshman orientation week before it became problematic.

She didn't remember his name anymore, but she wasn't good with names, not really, so that didn't bother her much. She picked him based on a informal survey, well... eavesdropping really, and reading people's livejournals if they had Cambridge or Harvard listed as a location. It was amazing what you could find unlocked about the proficiency of a one night stand sex partner. He was a TA, six years older than her, good aesthetics and experienced with women. A nice choice.

He looked a little taken aback when she caught up with him and explained what she wanted, but he hadn't said no either, and he lived up to his reputation, so that was taken care of. It was a little messy and a lot distracting, so she didn't think sex would be a thing for every day, but it was nice to have it crossed off her list of things to do.

Then there was Eric Albright. He of the earnest eyes and deceptively sweet face. He of the, “You're going to go through your life thinking guys don't want to go out with you because you're a successful woman and you're smarter than them, but let me tell you, from the bottom of my heart, that won't be true. Guys will cross the street when they see you coming because you are heinous fucking bitch.”

Here was the thing. She broke up with him, all right, because he was...he was the one who said that closed relationships weren't for him. He'd rather see other people too, girls who looked after themselves, girls who could be _nice_. And she was the one who said, fuck that. So where did he even get off saying shit like that to her, like it was true, like he knew her, like he'd been anything but the occasional fifteen minutes of stress relief that she could have had much easier with a dildo or her right hand. The dildo would have been better endowed anyway. Ditto her right hand.

It was possible she should not have put that out there in an unlocked entry on her livejournal, but by that point she'd drunk most of a six pack and all her ideas were good ones. According to the Ad Board, it was also possible she should not have created a website to show all those nice girls, those pretty girly-girls who spent all their time cooing after their guys and being nice to them, what those guys they were being nice to really thought of them. Like hot or not on steroids, for Harvard. But, hey, at least she didn't compare them to farm animals like Billy Olsen suggested, thank goodness for small mercies. Not that they acted much better.

(She grabbed all the facebook pictures she could get from the Harvard directories to make her website. The only face she skipped on purpose was one girl, tall and elegant and from the looks of her, exactly the sort of person the Facemash website was about. But Mark had kind of met her at this ridiculously boring party her first week at school, and she was the only thing there that was not, herself, boring or ridiculous for reasons that weren't yet clear. _Hello, Eduarda Saverin_ , she'd murmured, and stared at her (lovely) face for one long, drunk moment of peace, before coding to exclude it.)

When she actually started dating Eduarda a few weeks after that, Chris about busted a gut laughing. “I know her from GSA. Well, if you want to have loud, semi-public lesbian sex, you have picked the right partner.”

“Hey,” Dustin protested. “I've met her and she's really nice. Not that I would mind having really loud, semi-public lesbian sex with her if I could! I wouldn't! I just... she's really nice.”

Mark just shrugged and hummed to herself, tuning them both out in favor of fine tuning a graphics project she was working on.

 **You think I can't get her like you, you motherfucker**

In a lot of ways Eduarda Saverin was a human trophy, like what the hero of the movie got for winning. Or, really, the living embodiment of everything dickheads like Eric Albright drooled themselves to sleep over and Mark knew it and so did they. For the first week or so she dated Eduarda, she thought about that all the time, smug and deep, that those bastards were looking and looking and wanting and wanting and they would never have her, never even get a look in. That Mark herself had the hero's girlfriend and was in fact the hero and not them.

But after the first few weeks, when Eduarda Saverin, the Harvard brilliant, ballerina beauty queen settled into being Mark's Warda-- and she was imperfect and lovely, too smart and too nervous, twitchy as a scared rabbit, with everything about her contained in dark eyes like the whole world-- Mark didn't think of her like that anymore, couldn't. She knew her mind had changed about the time she got lost in a coding jag, chasing the most perfectly elegant solution to a problem she was pretty sure even the professor hadn't thought of. It was golden, sublime, and definitely more exciting than minor distractions like food and sleep.

She didn't even notice when Eduarda wandered into the suite in hour eighteen, other then the vague sensation of the smell of something delicious and Dustin's overeager voice crowing, “Oh my GOD, is that crispy pad thai? You are my she-hero! She-ro! My heroine! Are you going to bring food a lot? Because if you ever get sick of Mark not appreciating you, you should never forget how much I do,” and the sound of Warda's laughter, electric on her spine.

Mark didn't look up from the monitor, but she smiled and let her head tilt back, just slightly when Warda's warm hand settled on her arm. “I'm not going to hand feed you, because I don't think our relationship is at that level, but I am putting this food here, so you can get some without actually getting up and acknowledging the existence of the world, okay?”

And the edges of Mark's mouth might have tilted up higher. And then Warda kissed her. Not on the mouth, but just delicately, a brush of lips on the outer shell of her ear. Mark could feel the breath behind her laughter, warm and sweet. Mark shivered and blinked. For a moment, the lines on her monitor blurred.

“I acknowledge your existence,” she heard herself mutter. “You can worry about the world, okay? I'm delegating that to you.” Then she went back to concentrating on her project, but she could feel the stretch of Warda's smile against her cheek, lingering in the back of her consciousness long after Warda herself left.

After that, what she felt about Warda was more like-- there were just some things in the world that were Mark's simply and solely, like the feel of her laptop under her hands, the warm, easy affection of her parents and the steady presence of her brothers at her back when they weren't being jackasses. And very quickly, without her much thinking about it at all, her Warda became one of those things.

It was lucky, because in some ways, Warda was a lot of trouble (not too much, but a lot). Just walking across the yard with her was an endurance test. Not just because people-- mostly men-- felt like they were allowed to stare at Warda with lust in their eyes, contemplating, like they had some kind of right to imagine her naked like a porn woman or whatever it was they were doing. Mark did not like that, did not want people to look, but logically she didn't know what she could do to stop it. But, more than that, she did not want people to talk.

They should be able to walk across Harvard Square and drunk dudes should not get to scream out things that made Warda bite her lip and steady herself like she was trying not to flinch. Warda should not have to smile afterward and act like people treating her like that was in any way acceptable and normal and ordinary.

And if people did have to act like assholes, Mark should be able to stare them down with the vicious force of her glare alone and that should make them run squirming away, feeling like the waste of space they were. She shouldn't have to... the only thing that worked reliably to get people to shut up and leave Warda alone was when a guy, usually Dustin, of all people, walked with them, laughing, one arm flung over Warda's shoulder, like he was... like it was Dustin and Warda who were together... _that_ made people back off. Mark wished she had a gun. Or a dick. Fervently and for the first time in her life.

 **We can do it like the man'dem, man'dem / Sugar sugar sugar**

People liked to ask stupid questions when they knew who she was with, questions no one ever asked when she was with Eric. Like, 'which one of you is the 'man', it's you, right, Mark?' Which was inherently ridiculous. The facts were clear on their face, she wasn't a man and neither was Eduarda. And it wasn't... sex with Warda was nothing like sex with that nameless TA or Eric Albright. It was just...

The first time was when Eduarda texted her, _swing by and pick me after my dance class as seven and we'll have dinner_. Mark went early, figuring she'd get the chance to finish up her OS homework on her laptop while Warda was doing whatever she did. She didn't expect to really watch. She didn't expect to be interested. (She expected Eduarda to be soft in bed, delicate and gentle)

That was clearly... she was wrong in her expectations. All of them.

It wasn't that she didn't know that Warda danced, it was just that normally, Mark wouldn't care less about it. People moving their limbs with various degrees of coordination, usually trying to impress other people, sometimes with grinding. It was boring and Mark sucked at, which made it even more boring than normal.

But the thing was, it wasn't that, what Eduarda did. Warda was... she was like a ballerina. Tall and graceful, doing complicated things on her tip-toes, then a sudden jump, and down again, like it was no effort at all. Her face gone soft like she was a million miles away, because this was something she did that wasn't about other people at all, it was just about her. A butterfly, dancing on air. She made the other students in the room look like they were golems, made of sweaty, unwieldy clay. These grunting, heaving things, while she was the one who was airborne. Mark put her laptop away and tucked it into her bag.

Watching her, Mark thought she might love it, love it like Mark loved coding. Mark's hands shook and she felt, she felt this fascination, bright and deep and heavy, like it was all over her skin. She wanted, that was all she knew. She wanted to put her hands on skin.

She asked in the dressing room while Warda was peeling off her shoes, sighing and bending back her toes in a way toes shouldn't bend. Her feet were a mess of bruises, cuts and blisters, but that hardly seemed to matter. “Why?” Mark demanded. “Why don't you do this all the time? Nothing else you ever do makes you feel like this does.”

Warda looked at her from out of big, wide eyes and shook her head, like there was anything Mark had said that wasn't perfectly true. “It's just a fun hobby,” she said. “I have to live in the real world. I have to make a living.”

“People do make livings,” Mark said, because she knew that was true, she'd gotten dragged to the ballet at least twice by her mother. “There are stages and extremely expensive tickets and charity galas, so someone must be making a living.”

Warda made this weird scoffing sound and a hand gesture that looked dismissive. “Oh,” she said. “Yeah. Someone. Just like someone makes a living being a Hollywood star. If I'd gone to Juilliard, maybe, but I didn't.”

Mark could feel herself frowning. “Why didn't you?” she asked. “Why aren't you? If someone tried to keep me away from doing what I loved, I'd stop them.”

Warda stared at her for a long moment, and then she laughed. There was something about it that transformed her face, and not in a nice way, but still... still beautiful. “Yes, you have all the answers, Mark. It's so easy when you know exactly what to do and who to be and no one ever messes with you, right? So goddamned easy when everyone around you supports you and helps you make things happen.”

Mark shrugged. “That's right,” she said, “But, we aren't talking about me--”

Eduarda made a face, not really a smile but not something else. Angry, Mark realized. Warda was angry at her now. She was on her feet, her bare, battered feet, half in and half out of her leotard, stalking up to Mark, her dark eyes narrow. “I know what we're talking about. I'm right here in the room, having the conversation with you, so I think I can hear us talking.”

Mark made a defensive motion without really knowing why, her hands in front of her, a stumbling step back, almost to the wall. Eduarda was delicate on her feet, beautiful, a dancer. She also had six inches on Mark and a lot of that was whipcord muscle. It was never more obvious than at this moment. “I--” Mark began and for a vicious second, she thought that Eduarda was going to hit her.

She kissed her instead, Warda who sometimes blushed, Warda who usually looked down and away, but wasn't now. It was not a sweet kiss, not a girly kiss. Warda's arms were pressed to the wall on either side of Mark, thin but tensile, boxing her in. Her lips were firm and relentless, like she knew exactly what she wanted and how to get it after all. Mark could feel her shoulder-blades hit the wall, and then her own hands were pressed against Warda's body, hanging on while they kissed.

“Bathroom door locks, come on,” Warda hissed, and Mark let herself be pushed toward it, staggering a little until Warda's hand on her elbow steadied her. She was breathing too hard, panting, gusts of air caught up in her throat, too shallow. Her skin was flushed, her lips ached like they'd been rubbed too long. How long had it been?

She had a stray thought about Chris and what he'd once said about loud, semi-public lesbian sex and maybe... maybe that had not been bullshit at all.

“Warda,” she whispered, when Eduarda stopped to bolt the door and Mark was momentarily bereft, no hands on her, just leaning against the wall to keep herself steady. “What are we doing? You're pissed at me.”

Eduarda smiled, and there was her sweetness again, slow and easy, just slipping out, like the pink edge of her tongue when she licked her lips. “Yeah. I'm so pissed at you that if you're good with it, I'm going to make you come right now,” she said. “I mean, later, I'm going to take you home, suck your nipples til you're sore and touch you until you're screaming for it, but right now we don't have time, so I'm just going to make you come. Are you up for it, Zuckerberg?”

Mark swallowed. “Yeah,” she said, and it was only mostly bravado. “Show me what you've got, Saverin.”

“Smile, you're beautiful,” Eduarda said, and ran a finger over her cheek, gently that time, like that even meant anything, but Mark never got a chance to say that, because the next thing, Warda was on her again, warm and a little sweaty still from class. Her hands tangled easily in Mark's hair. She was graceful when she knelt, grinning, her mouth a little too red from kissing Mark's mouth. “You should wear a skirt, by the way, it would make this so much easier.”

“What, no it wouldn't,” Mark said reflexively. All the parts of her actually still operating were focused on Warda, on her knees on the tiles, smiling up at her, eyes dark under a thick veil of lashes.

Warda laughed, golden bright. “Yes, it would. Easy access, baby.” Then she demonstrated what she meant when she tugged the zipper of Mark's cargo pants down with a steady yank, trapping them around her ankles. If Mark were a guy with a dick, all she'd need to do was pull it out, but she wasn't, Warda didn't want her to be. Warda wanted this, apparently, the way she curled her thumbs into the waist of Mark's boxers (or maybe they were Dustin's, whoever's were clean) and peeled them down. The way she smiled and rubbed her cheek against Mark's bare thigh, inhaling like she loved the smell more than anything.

“You don't shave here either,” she said. “Good, I like that.” Mark didn't even know what that meant until she remembered the porn she'd seen, how bare the women were between their legs, empty, like a little girl. “You smell wet. You smell like you want it.”

Mark whimpered a little, helplessly. “Yeah,” she managed. “So, um, anytime you wanted to--” And there was that tongue, that tongue that had just been between her lips, filthy-sweet, licking a stripe over her slit, so hot her knees trembled. It was wet and messy, she could feel herself getting wetter with the back and forth motion of Warda's tongue, up inside her, than over her clit with careless grace like it was so easy. The careful slide of the fingers on Warda's left hand, up and down and then inside her, up to the knuckle and out again, while the right was steady on her hip, keeping her where she was.

It was minutes, not even tens of them. She could feel her thighs tighten. Feel the twist of the silky-strong strands of Warda's hair under her hands. Feel the steady rumble of Warda's laugh and the way she didn't even stop licking, stop fingering, just urged Mark through it, like making her come was the best thing ever.

She kissed Mark afterward, while Mark's knees were still unsteady. Gently this time, but thoroughly. Her mouth was still wet and slick, a little bitter, but not like the taste of a boy. Not that a boy had after kissed Mark after eating her. Mark licked her mouth, chasing after the taste, because that was her, her on Warda's mouth.

“Let's get take-out and just go back to the dorms, okay?” Warda crooned, words a little muffled because she was still so close to Mark. Mark just nodded. Eduarda could have asked her to walk home with her pants and boxers still around her ankles and she'd probably have nodded then too, this was easy.

And then there was the time they went to see the Boston Ballet, which, Mark figured Warda would like it and she could rest her eyes or something. But, mostly she ended up watching Eduarda's face as she leaned forward, captivated by the dancers, lights shifting over her dark eyes. She smiled and cried through the performance and threaded her fingers through Mark's carelessly and easily as if she were a little girl, like one of Mark's nieces. Mark didn't really get it, but she figured she didn't have to in order to know it was nice.

Or the time after that, where they snuck into the theater on an off day while everything was dark and empty. “I just wanna see what it would feel like on this stage,” Eduarda said, and it wasn't like Mark would say no to that.

So, she ended up sitting at the edge of the stage, messenger bag perched precariously on her knees while Warda slipped off her heeled shoes and laughed and did something fancy and ridiculous in her bare feet and yoga jeans, this crazy spinning jump and graceful sway.

Mark put her chin on her palms and watched her, more her face than her feet. Both of them jumped when someone else walked onto the stage-- a guy, kind of oldish, but skinny as a dancer, and smiling. Eduarda turned a nervous red and shook her head. “Oh, God, you-- we're not supposed to be here. I'm sorry,” she stammered, but the guy just shook his head.

“Mademoiselle, may I have this dance?” he asked and winked, like it was a joke. Eduarda shook her head and put her hands over her face, but he just laughed and said, “Please, consider it a forfeit for breaking and entering if you prefer.”

“Do it, Warda, come in,” Mark urged, because she wanted to see. So Warda laughed and peeled her hands away from her face. She was still blushing, but the guy did this thing that was half a bow to her, and took her hand. He was good too, that much was obvious, not just the way he moved, but the luminous way that Eduarda watched him between twirls and lifts.

“You're not in this Company, obviously,” he said afterward, when it was over. “You're young enough that you're still in school, I'd imagine.”

“Yes,” Eduarda said and blushed again. “I don't think I'm exactly Company material anyway.”

“Nonsense,” he said, which made Mark smile.

“That's what I've been telling her,” she said. They both stared at her for a second, but hey, it was true.

“You're not in school in Boston,” he went on, as if Mark hadn't spoken. “I'd know you. New York?”

“No, I am in Boston,” Eduarda said and did that smiling blush thing again, slipping away from him and closer to Mark. “My friend and I both are. At Harvard.”

“Harvard?” He outright stared at that, it was kind of funny. Like Warda had just said she was joining the army because she liked to eat babies or something equally ridiculous. “You... but... but why?”

“That may be the first time anyone ever asked someone why they were at Harvard in that particular tone,” Mark said dryly. “The horror, the horror of the Ivy League education.”

Eduarda winced and half elbowed Mark in the side. “I apologize for my friend,” she said, smiling a little. “But, she is right. My whole family is very honored Harvard was willing to accept me.” Mark snorted and Eduarda elbowed her again, this time with intent. Mark didn't care at all, though, she'd always thought Eduarda could do this dancing thing if she ever pushed for it, it was nice to hear other people agreeing to how right she was.

Nothing came of that, but it wasn't that much longer than a few days after that before Eduarda stopped her by the door to her room, caught her by the wrist and looked at her.

“By the way. Um. I love you,” Warda said, and then blushed her fabulous pink. “I hope you don't mind.”

“No. Why would I mind?” Mark muttered. Her eyes were trained on the ground in front of her, but she sucked her lower lip between her teeth and maybe, possibly, she was blushing too. “I mean. That came out wrong. I do you too, er, also, so of course I don't mind.”

It felt good. It felt terrific. Like in this particular moment, there was nothing she could want that she didn't have.

 **Rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin' money like a pimp**

Facebook happened because of Eric, but it also happened because of Warda. Eric caused Facemash, which attracted the Winklevii, tall and smiling smugly with their blond wholesomeness, all perfect teeth and expensive clothes to go with their rower's arms.

Warda and Dustin and that long ago conversation where he made an idiot of himself and was just lucky Warda was incredibly tolerant, when Mark inadvertently stumbled into a relationship, that was the root of the real genius idea. Because Dustin didn't get it, about Warda, and Mark didn't get it either, not at first but they both wanted to. They wanted to know about her.

The rest of the idea came to Mark walking down the Common with Warda, watching people stare and smile and presume, and knowing she couldn't stop them, that she couldn't write _taken_ on Eduarda's forehead in brilliant, neon ink. That wasn't allowed.

She could write it on the internet, though. In vivid blue and white, simple and clean, across Eduarda's profile, she could put it all there, that Eduarda Saverin was in a relationship, that Eduarda Saverin belonged to her.

She could catch Eduarda by the arm on an icy February night when Warda was going on and on about the Bee of all ridiculous things, which, why would she even want to belong to them when Mark... when... Mark could look her in the eye and say, “I have an idea, a really good one, and I need you to be in on it with me.”

She could see a smile in response, when she explained her idea, what it was going to be, better than a Final Club, better than some sad girl shadow of a final club. Warda's dark eyes were luminous in the yellow streetlights. “All right. All right, let's do it.”

And then they were partners in that too. It moved so fast after that.

Then there was the day not long after when one of Eduarda's friends (red smiling mouth, Asian, wore stiletto boots like they didn't hurt at all). _Looked_ at Warda too much, so much it bugged the shit out of her even before she'd checked out her Facebook profile and noticed that she was _interested in women_.

Warda looked so pleased with herself when she came around, that girl in tow, like it was completely fine to introduce Mark to someone whose eyes were glued to Warda's ass. “Christy's going to introduce us to Sean Parker. Napster Sean Parker,” Eduarda said, and she looked so damned happy.

Mark shrugged. “That's cool,” she admitted. And, later, into Eduarda's ear, “Your friend should come with us to the meeting. You two can make out for him or something. I hear he's into that, it'll probably get him interested.”

She heard the hiss of indrawn breath, but she felt the accompanying flinch without seeing it. She probably would have apologized if Warda ever asked her too.

 **I can do it like a brother, do it like a dude**

Sean Parker was a mistake, Mark knew that now. Not for the company, not for that, but for everything else. Everyone made mistakes, everyone got distracted, but some of them cost more than others. Sean Parker was a very expensive mistake.

She didn't like a lot of people, was the thing, and not just in the way other people meant when they said they didn't like someone. Most of them... they didn't ping, they just bounced off her like particles with the same charge, boring at best, repulsive at worst. Then there were the special ones who just... there was something, when she looked at them, interesting, electric. The right atomic charge. Eric Albright had been a little like that, but he was a pale imitation of what it felt to be in the room with Eduarda, smiling down at her, infinity in her eyes.

Sean Parker was like that, though. When he talked, Mark saw possibilities. He said the words she wanted, the things she wanted him to, when he spun stories about what Facebook would be, what their lives would be. So much so that she was sure, so sure, that if she just presented it right, Warda would have to see it too. That Warda would want it too, and they could... could share it maybe? Mark didn't really think that second part through very well. She just knew she liked Sean and that she... that Warda was hers. That maybe, if they were together, it would be better.

Warda didn't see it her way, not at first. Her lips were tight and narrow and she said, “Mark, I don't... I'm not into guys. I'm not into threesomes, which... you know that. You know how I feel about that.” Which, yes, Mark knew she said no when skeevy assholes asked, but this was a different situation. This was Mark asking.

Mark shook her head, because Warda wasn't listening. Lately, she never seemed to. “You're being really judgmental about this,” she said, calmly as she could. “You've never even tried to have a threesome, have you? You've fucked exactly one guy in your life. What about experimentation? This is college!”

Eduarda's laugh was painful. “I'm not experimenting with that jackass.”

“You don't even know him!” Mark bit her lip. When did this get so frustrating?

“And neither do you or you'd have noticed he was a fucking jackass!” Eduarda never really shouted unless she was drunk, not the way she was yelling now. “Come on, if you have to fuck around with a guy this badly, can't it be someone decent? What about... what about... I don't know-- Dustin? He'd do it. I'd do it if it were him, if you really needed to... to _experiment_ this badly.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Mark blinked, too surprised to even yell back. “He's my... he's basically my brother. That's completely gross. I can't believe you're hot for Dustin.”

Warda made a face, fists balled at her side. “I'm not and don't you dare insinuate I am! Fuck you, I'm hot for you! All I meant, was that if you needed a genuine article dick that badly, it would be nice if it were attached to a decent human being who actually likes and respects both of us.”

“Sean respects me!” Mark said and, that part didn't even make any sense. Why would he be here, investing in the company if he didn't believe in it, didn't believe in Mark?

“Like the assholes who used to wolf whistle in Harvard Square, I bet he does,” Eduarda muttered, low enough that maybe Mark wasn't supposed to hear. Then louder, “Respects you? Maybe, but I'd watch myself if I were you. Me? Not at all. Yet, you want me to get into bed and spread my legs for him--”

“No! What? I never said--”

“Or watch you spread your legs for him! Which is not better!” Eduarda spat.

“He might respect you if you actually tried to--” Mark stopped, shook her head. It didn't make sense that it was suddenly this hard. Everything with Sean was so easy lately, when had everything with Warda turned so damned hard? “Come to Palo Alto, and it will be different. You'll see.”

“That is not going to happen.” Then she got up, spun on her heels and walked out the door.

“Passive aggressiveness is really unattractive, but go ahead and walk away!” Mark shouted after her back. If she heard it she didn't turn around.

So, Warda said no and Warda said no, and then Mark went to Palo Alto and Eduarda went to New York and all Mark ever heard was no, no, no, when it used to be always yes. Until they were finally face to face again in that crowded Palo Alto rental house, Eduarda finally present, rain dripping through her hair, down her nose and cheeks, soaking the expensive wool of her jacket. Pissed off about Mark forgetting to meet her flight, like that was the most important thing.

When what it really was... Mark said, “I'm afraid you're going to get left behind. I don't want that.”

Warda's eyes were wide and for a second her fists curled, tight and hard, but just for a second and then she slumped down again. “This is about Parker,” she said, but she didn't sound angry, just tired. Her hands slipped back to her sides again, loose, lax. “That's what this really is, isn't it?”

Mark breathed. She wasn't good at this part, explaining herself. Normally, she didn't have to. Normally, Eduarda seemed to know, or at least know enough. “No. I mean, yes, I would like you to give him-- give us a chance. But, no, it's that I need you here, Warda. Here, with me.”

Eduarda closed her eyes. “Or else... what? I get left behind, you said,” she whispered and Mark wanted to say no, that wasn't it, not the way that she'd meant it. But she didn't have a chance to before Warda's eyes were open again, dark and quiet with something behind them Mark didn't understand and didn't like. But the words on her lips were right, because they were, “Yes. All right. I'll do it, if that's what... that's what it takes. For you to stay with me.”

And that's when Mark should have said no, no, no you've got it wrong, but all Warda ever said anymore was no, and here... here she'd just said yes. Yes was the word Mark needed to hear. So she smiled, she couldn't help but smile. Smiled and stepped up, leaned on her toes and kissed Warda, and Warda kissed her back, warm and familiar and still as easy as ever.

“Good,” Mark said, and took Eduarda's hands in hers. They shook a little, but Warda was wet, cold. She needed to get warm, that was all. “Come upstairs and let me show you my room.”

Eduarda followed her a few steps in before they almost got bowled over by an excited Dustin, “Warda, my favorite angel of beauty,” he said, grinning ear to ear. “You should have called me, I'd have picked you up from the airport!”

“Someone could have,” Warda said, and okay, forgetting to pick her up had been Mark's fault, but now she was smiling for some reason. She smiled for him, at him, let him wrap her up in a hug and then swing her around, while Mark stood by, tapping her foot.

“I hate to interrupt your romantic comedy reunion moment, but whenever you're done groping my girlfriend, Dustin,” Mark spat.

Eduarda blinked and went absolutely still. “Mark,” she whispered, but nothing else.

Dustin put Warda down, at least, but he gave her this look, weird and pale, the faint imprint of his freckles shining a little redder. “Dude,” he said. “Did someone piss in your Cocoa Puffs? What the hell?”

“Me? You're the one who...” Mark began, and then shook her head. She was wasn't going to do this now. She grabbed Warda's hand again. “Have you seen Sean?” she asked instead. “Tell him we need to talk to him. He can meet us in my room.”

“Us?” Dustin asked, and the pause was just long enough that Mark was pretty sure he was trying to send some kind of half-assed message, but she'd left her decoder ring at home. His mouth was set now. “Us, like you and me and Warda and Chris, business us?”

“Us, like mind your own business and write some damn code, Warda and I, us,” Mark said back, looking past him already. “If you won't look for him, I will, so that's fine.”

Dustin shook his head. “Warda,” he said, like he could just... “Hey, are you okay?” And really, what the hell was his problem now?

Mark almost asked him, but Warda was the one who said, “Yeah, no, it's good, I can take care of myself. I'll talk to you later.” And she went when Mark tugged her by the hand and left that whole scene of weirdness behind, so Mark could relax at least.

Except, she couldn't really, it was sort of wrong from the start. It wasn't that Warda couldn't take care of herself, this was still the same Eduarda Saverin who broke a rower's foot with a stiletto heel. It was just that she was different like that-- those heels and slim, narrow skirts were like armor-- and in Mark's bed she didn't have any.

It was also not that, on an intellectual level, Mark hadn't processed that having a threesome meant that the other two people involved would probably touch each other, not just her, that Sean would want to touch... She just hadn't really... see, it was fine, Sean kissing her. Electric, in a way that made bubbles of laughter spill out like fulfilled possibilities. He was brilliant, he was exactly the right kind of brilliant, with his hands and his mouth and the tongue on him and he was going to make facebook beautiful. She did want... she wanted that. Not as much as she wanted other things, but a lot.

Then he smiled, that crooked, sweet smile and said, “Hey, Eduarda, get over here. We don't have any dread diseases, baby.” Mark followed his gaze, and there was Warda, arms around her knees, as close to the edge of the bed as a person could get without falling off, still dressed in a thin white slip and stockings, but that left her long, golden arms shockingly bare where the loose strands of her hair didn't cover them.

This was Warda unarmed and unarmored, and Sean was _looking_ at her when she was like that.

Sean put a hand on her and she flinched. Eduarda flinched and her head jerked up. She looked right at Mark, dark eyes huge and wet, and suddenly, Mark could hear the echo of her mother's voice like she was five years old again, soft and scared and, _“Marcie, what are you doing?”_

It paralyzed her. For ten seconds she just stared, while Sean slid up on his knees, easy and smiling, one hand still resting on Warda's shoulder like it belonged there and he said, “Come on, relax, no one here bites.” His hand stroked down Eduarda's, arm, and he leaned in, like he might kiss her. Warda's eyes never wavered, she was looking at Mark, and Mark thought about butterfly wings, but Eduarda wasn't a butterfly.

Warda could say no (she had said no and no and no, before she'd ever said yes) but she wasn't saying no anymore, just looking at Mark and then she nodded once, tightly, and shifted over, like maybe she was going to kiss Sean back. His mouth on Warda's mouth, and Mark had been wrong, so wrong, this wasn't interesting at all, it was terrible, like the wrong set of hands on her laptop, but worse and he had his hands on...

“Get out,” she spat, suddenly. She barely recognized her own voice, low and sharp, like a whip-crack. “This is a mistake, you have to leave now.”

That was when she processed how very badly she'd fucked up, because it was Warda... it was Warda who flinched like Mark had hit her and then jerked suddenly into motion, like she was the one who was going to get off the bed. Mark barely caught her, tight hand around her wrist. “No,” she managed. “Not you. You,” she said to Sean, staring him down. “This is a mistake. You have to go somewhere else right now.”

He blinked at her, and for a second, she thought he was just going to leave. He smiled, though, slow and sleepy, and looked directly at Eduarda instead of her when he said, “Hot and cold running bitches in expensive suits are not as rare as you think, Mark. Just because this one's your first--”

Mark didn't really have a grasp on what she did next. It wasn't that she was physically capable of throwing a much taller male person out of her room, but she must have managed it somehow, because the next thing she knew, he was on the outside of the door and she was slamming it in his face.

Warda was still on her bed, open mouthed and liquid-eyed. “What was that?” she whispered. “What the... what was all of this, Mark?”

Mark straightened her spine and forced herself to meet her eyes. “A mistake. I... I apologize. I don't... this wasn't what I saw happening.”

Warda shook her head. Her hair slipped forward, partly veiling her face. Mark wasn't sure she liked that, wasn't sure at all, liked it better when it was caught up in a ponytail or a bun. “Which part?” she asked. “Because... I feel like a made a few mistakes here, too, and to be honest I don't know what you actually _saw happening_.”

“I shouldn't have asked you to do this,” Mark said, firm and factual as she could be. She could admit it, when she was wrong. She could. “That was a... I didn't like him touching you. I didn't like him looking at you. He shouldn't have said--”

“No,” Warda said. “He shouldn't have and you shouldn't have and I shouldn't have agreed in this first place. I won't do it again, you understand? If you... if you need,” and her voice cracked a little. The door felt too heavy and cold against Mark's back. “If you need other people, guys, whatever, you can-- I'll handle it, I'll learn to... deal with it. But it won't involve me and it better... not him. Anyone, but not _him_.”

“No,” Mark said, too loud, but volume control wasn't on the top of her mind. “No. I said this was a mistake and I meant this was a mistake. I won't do it again.”

Warda smiled, faint and bitter, barely visible through her hair. “I heard that before, when I was a little girl. My father to my mother. Oh, she meant nothing, my dear, oh, never again.” She stopped. “I didn't mean--”

“Your father's a jackass,” Mark said, because at least she knew that much. She'd seen enough to know that.

“Oh? And what are you? What do you think this makes you? What does going along with it make me?” And then she laughed, and it was like she was laughing at everything, the whole situation. It felt better for some reason and Mark let out a breath before answering.

“A jackass,” Mark said and laughed a little back Okay. This was going to be okay. “Who will never do this again. And is asking you to... to come out here to stay, with me.”

Eduarda sighed nosily. “Because otherwise I get left behind? Is that what this is?”

“No,” Mark said as quickly as she could, too quickly. “Because I need you out here, or haven't you been listening?”

“No, you don't.” Eduarda sighed and brushed her hair back with her hands. She looked tired under the veil of it, sad. Mark hated that. She took a stumbling step forward and then another. “Don't hate me for saying this,” Eduarda said.

“What?” Mark was already shaking her head as she knelt on the bed. “I don't hate you, but what?”

Eduarda closed her eyes. “The thing is, that I love you, Mark, and I right now I wish I could stop doing that, but I can't. But... I'm not going to drop out of school and I'm not going to move out to Palo Alto.”

Mark shook her head. “No, listen, you have to. You just said you love me, so... so you have to, I need you, Facebook needs you. This is... this is the time and the place it's going to explode, Eduarda, don't you see that?”

“I see that, and I believe that you're going to make it great, because you...” Warda whispered and she was smiling a little, eyes closed. Her cheeks looked wet in the angle of the light. “I see that you... you, that when you want something, you want every piece of it. And if there's a tiny part you can't have, you'd rather smash the whole thing than let even that little bit go. You like to own things, Mark, whether it's Facebook or... or... me.”

“I don't know what that's supposed to mean,” Mark said. “Are you... what... are you breaking up with me?” She sucked in a breath. “Because, I apologized, okay? I'll do it again. I'm sorry, of course I'm sorry, I didn't correctly anticipate what--”

Warda shook her head. Her eyes were still closed. “Stop it. I'm not breaking up with you. Even though you were so jealous of the fact that I'm fucking... friends... with a guy who is also your best friend, that you just almost bullied me into... no. I'm just breaking up with Facebook. Or, resigning my position, rather. I'll be your... passive investor, but I won't be your CFO.”

Mark laughed, even knowing it was absolutely the wrong thing to do. “What? That's insane. You can't do that, you are CFO.”

Warda's eyes opened, finally, and they were wet, luminous. She was probably crying. She was. “It's your thing, Mark, and this is the time and place for that. But I... this is not my thing. I'm not the CFO that you need.”

“That's... not, just... stop crying, I can't, when you... That's-- yes, you are! It's... you're the one I want to be partners with. You are!” Mark reached out and Eduarda let her, let her take her hands. They were still cold.

They were just still. “There have been so many things I have wanted that I have given up, my... my fucking college education is not going to be one of them,” she said. “You don't even know what that means, giving things up. I hope you never do.”

“You want me to give you up,” Mark said, because she couldn't understand this if that wasn't what Warda was saying.

Warda opened her mouth, like she was going to say something else, but she never got the chance. She was interrupted by a shattering crash, followed by a vicious thump and people screaming somewhere not too far outside the door. “What the hell?” she hissed. Before Mark had a chance to say, ignore it, it's probably someone diving off the roof again, Warda was on her feet, grabbing her dress and tugging it over her head like it wasn't still wet before shoving on her high heeled shoes. She still looked like-- her hair was a mess, and her make-up was water smeared, just enough to be noticeable.

“Where are we going?” Mark said, as she followed her out the door.

Eduarda looked at her like she was the one who wasn't making any sense. “To keep anyone from getting killed? That's the kind of notoriety Facebook probably doesn't need.”

They reach the kitchen and Mark elbows her way through the thick circle of people just in time to watch Chris pull Dustin off of Sean, which was probably for the best since he was holding what looked like a broken glass and had a completely un-Dustin like expression of loathing twisting his face. “You better step up, Parker,” he hissed. “Those are my friends you're talking shit about.”

Sean staggered to his feet, a smile on his face. “Step up? Seriously, Moskovitz? Did you see that line in a movie or something?”

“I'll see your face in a--” Dustin said, and tried very hard to lunge out of Chris' grip.

“Dustin,” Chris hissed, at the same time that Warda said, “That's enough,” cool and steady from by Mark's side.

It was her voice everyone listened to. “Warda,” Dustin said, soft and too fast. “Mark. He--”

“I can guess,” Eduarda said and Mark shrugged because she didn't want to guess. “Dustin. Why don't you put him in a taxi and send him back to... wherever to sleep it off?”

“But, he--” Dustin began, shaking his head. Mark would have just watched it play out, probably, mostly because she didn't have anything to add.

It was Sean who had to make it worse. “What's a matter, Warda?” he spat. “You're all into this geek when you could have had me. You on the rag and it's clouding your judgment or something?”

Eduarda smiled, slow and vicious. She had strong, dancer's feet, wore sharp pointy heels that had broken a rower's foot when she was drunk. Sean was no rower and she was dead sober, so she just punched him in the face. She didn't give a warning, just, “I think I've had enough of you.”

“You fucking bitch!” he howled, scrambling back, hopping back, clutching his cheek where Warda's knuckle had connected. Warda took another step forward and he flinched, bumping into the kitchen island behind him.

She kept smiling. “I think I like standing next to you after all, Sean. It makes me feel so goddamned butch.” Someone in the room clapped and Warda's grin just widened.

Mark found herself smiling too. She wanted... she was still going to meet with Sean's contacts, still going to... Facebook was still important. But, so were other things. “Dustin,” she said.

“Mark.” He looked at her, long and wary, rubbing his bruised knuckles with one free hand. She would potentially have to apologize to him too. Or maybe he'd just let it go, he was good like that.

But, later, anyway. “Warda's right. He needs to go sleep it off. Can you put him in a cab?”

Dustin's eyebrow went up and his mouth quirked, which was better than his last expression. “Any cab? Any cab I want?”

Mark shrugged, open palmed. He gave her a better approximation of his normal smile. “Knock yourself out,” she said. “We're going back upstairs.” Then she spun around and grabbed Warda by the wrist. It felt different, leading her upstairs, than before. Better.

Still. When the door was closed behind them, the first thing Mark said was, “Is there anything I can say to convince you to change your mind? About Facebook?”

Warda just smiled and shook her head. “No. I'll be your girl. I won't be your CFO.”

Mark shook her head. She didn't want to hear this. She really didn't. But, if she had to... “You sort of said, before, that I wanted to... own you, I guess. You're actually-- I think you're not wrong about that.”

Eduarda frowned at her then, leaning back against the door. She looked really tall that way, all long legs and loose hair. “I never thought I was wrong.”

Mark shrugged and stared at the bedspread. It had rockets on it, blue ones, and red stars. Probably, Dustin had picked it out. So, yeah, she would definitely have to apologize to him too, which was just going to be awkward. “Well. Can I? I would feel a lot better, if I did. Like, I wouldn't have to be as worried about things.”

There was a long, stretched out silence. It broke when Eduarda laughed, a little too loud. “You're serious,” she said, still gasping with laughter, like it was hard to get enough air. “I can't believe you.”

“I don't see why you wouldn't believe me,” Mark said quickly. “It's not like I'd lie about something like this. If I can't have Facebook with you, you have to give me something else.”

“Like what?” Warda demanded. She stopped laughing at least, but she sounded a little breathless, like she might start again at any second. “Are you going to buy me one of those S&M collars and a leash?”

Mark blinked. “Huh,” she said, consideringly. “Can we do that? I mean, I was just going to say I wanted a binding legal tie, but now that you mention it, I like that idea also. Maybe not a leash, though, because that would be kind of weird.”

“Just a little weird, maybe,” Eduarda said. She pressed her hand to her mouth. “You are an alien. What kind of binding legal tie did you have in mind?”

Mark raised her palms. “I don't know. A regular one?”

Eduarda's mouth curled, but the mockery in it was gentle now. “What, do you mean you want to buy a house with me? Because I've looked at the statistics and smart money says we are in a real estate bubble.”

“Now you're just starting to make fun of me,” Mark muttered.

“Starting?” Eduarda grinned. “Okay, not a house. Let's see... what other kind of civil contracts are there? Are we going into oil futures together? I've done pretty well with that in the past but it is always a little bit of a gamble.”

“No. Come on, seriously.”

Eduarda walked over to Mark. “Seriously. Are you asking me to marry you?”

Mark frowned and offered her a hand. Warda took it. Her hand was warm, familiar, steady. Mark's. “It's legal back in Massachusetts, and you're going to stay there a while for school, so I don't see why not. But I want the other thing too. With a collar.”

Warda's hand tightened on hers. “I've created a monster.”

Mark paused to try to parse that. “Is that a no?”

Eduarda laughed. “To which part?”

“Both? Either?” Mark said.

“I'll tell you what... ask me again, this time next year. Both questions. Either. Maybe I'll say yes.” Eduarda stretched and yawned, all long, lean and smiling. Her neck would definitely look nice if there was something around it, possibly with Mark's name on it so people knew who she was, even if she was going to be in Boston. And hey, there was always email and texting and webchat. It was a thought.

“Deal.” Mark shrugged and scheduled it to pop up as a reminder in her calendar.


End file.
